Dr. Corry Robinson has served as Director of JFK Partners, an interdepartmental program of Pediatrics and Psychiatry at the CU School of Medicine, for the past 22 years. In this role, she provided leadership as a clinician, researcher, and educator in the fields of Developmental and Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorders in children. At the end of June, Dr. Robinson stepped down from as director at JFK, although still continuing in her academic appointment work and her work as principal investigator on some federally funded grant projects at the program. In an interview with Catherine Strode, Dr. Robinson looks back on what she believes to be her major accomplishments and how she envisions the future direction of these fields of study.

Catherine Strode: What do you feel have been your greatest accomplishments?

Corry Robinson: Early intervention has been my primary interest over the years. The ENRICH early intervention program is a model we got federal funding for initially and then continued under Part C (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) funding. It takes a transdisciplinary approach to the intervention with the families. A big emphasis is on showing parents what they can do to incorporate intervention into daily routines. That’s different from the standard individual physical, occupational, speech therapy that kids get under Part C. The ENRICH model looks at assigning a primary person to work with the family so they are not getting potentially conflicting input from different people. As part of the program, we did what I called reunion videos, following up with the families 15 or 20 years later. It was really gratifying to hear the parents articulate exactly what our goals were with the intervention: to build their confidence that they could have a family life.

CS: Besides early intervention, what other contributions are you most proud of?

CR: The work we’ve been doing on the dual diagnosis. The pilot bill passed. For the pilot, they have to get all the various agencies together and agree to collaborate and provide the services. It should give us an opportunity to have the agencies figure out how to break down those silos and bring funding together. The premise is you take a look at the presenting person: what do they need? Do they need to be out of the home for a while or can supports be provided in-home to stabilize the situation? Then the agencies figure out who’s responsible to pay.

CS: What does the data show on family interventions?

CR: The evidence used to argue for early intervention comes from intervention with more at-risk kids rather than kids with significant disabilities. It’s only until recently, with all the work on autism, where there’s actual data that says with intensive intervention you can really make a difference. Even with autism we can’t predict really who’s going to benefit from that intensive intervention but we’re making progress. Any child with significant delay could benefit from intensive intervention. We passed a law (IDEA) that says everyone who is eligible gets early intervention. It’s a very confused landscape. Every state gets to set its own definition of who’s eligible. Across the states, there are 22 different definitions of who is eligible. Some say you have to be two standard deviations below (the mean). Some don’t talk in terms of standard deviations, which is the metric that academics would want to see in place. Some say percent of delay, which is not a good, sound metric in terms of having a consistent documentation. The percentage of children served is all over the map as well. Here in Colorado, we’re a little bit over 3 percent. You’ve got Georgia, that was serving less than 1 percent, and Massachusetts. We know that children of color, poor kids are less likely to get into Part C. The bar that was set by the feds for expected enrollment was 2 percent. Most states were serving at least that percentage so no one has the incentive to really dig down into their data and look at who is being served because they’re meeting that bar. We found that based upon your normal curve distribution, you’d expect 15 percent of kids to be eligible. What I would argue is you need to look at how you define eligibility, the percentage you’d expect to see eligible, and if you’re not reaching that percentage, you need to drill down and see who you’re missing.

CS: What is your vision for the future of this work?

CR: Where everything is going in terms of medicine and long-term services and supports is integration across physical and behavioral health. When you’ve got someone with an intellectual disability, I don’t think there’s real strong relationships to primary care that there needs to be. We have to really pay attention to developing personnel. There are lots of psychologists but not many that feel comfortable with this population. In the training we do here, through our leadership education grant, multiple disciplines come together. There could be more collaboration between higher education and the community center boards. I’d love to see more of a career ladder go into place so people could get tuition forgiveness or some kind of support to work in this field while they’re in in college.

Catherine Strode is Advocacy Denver’s policy and outreach specialist.